Diana Gordon released her new EP, Wasted Youth, on April 3, but since March she hasn’t been able to tour and perform and connect with her fans the way she’d planned. “Promoting it has been challenging,” she explains about putting out the songs just as the self-quarantine required for our current health crisis started. “The quarantine has forced me to be resourceful; to use the things that I have. I used to fuss for hours over, ‘What am I going to do with my hair?’ … But I’m actually coming to peace with — my natural hair’s fine, deal with it.”

Here, she joins us from her living room in Los Angeles to belt out acoustic versions of her songs, including “Once a Friend,” “Wasted Youth,” and the hit song “Rollin'”. Brittany Spanos previously praised Gordon’s open vocals on that song, which “ricochet between restraint and abandon. The acoustic take on the song emphasizes the underlying rock influences on the track, which in its original form combines the genre with trap and pop.”

“I’ve been in quarantine for a good two months,” Gordon explains. “And I’m trying not to go crazy. It’s not just being indoors. I think there’s this subconscious feeling of what’s next — a little bit of anxiety and fear about that.” Later, she shares more of her hopes and anxieties for the future. “I have dreams for when this is over. Part of me wants to find a shipping crate and building a tiny house … and yet there’s a part of me, of my art inside, that I’ve yet to show the world, the best of me. I need to do that. So times I’ve been a little bit down, but I still want to believe in people; I still want to believe we’ll turn things around; I still want to believe we’ll get smart. … I want to.”